Popularity of Chinese language worldwide rides on the country's development and rising influence

When Frenchman Romain Tournier arrived in China three years ago as a product manager for French pharmaceutical company Servier, he found himself facing a Chinese boss and Chinese colleagues. "There were 15 people in my team," says Tournier, 28. "I could not work if I didn't speak Chinese." Tournier realized he had to totally immerse himself in the language if he wanted to survive in the country.

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So he spent three hours on Chinese lessons every week and listened to his team speaking Chinese all day long. He got into the habit of writing down all the new words he heard several times in meetings or daily conversations, and asked about them during his lessons.

After one year, Tournier could easily introduce himself to Chinese clients. He could answer the phone in Chinese and talk to local advertising agencies about marketing brochures.

But when Tournier got a taste of the immense opportunities from understanding this fast-developing country through its language, he went one step further - by setting up a center teaching Chinese to foreigners.

The TailorMade Chinese Center has trained 200 students since its establishment in November 2009 and expects to have up to 1,000 in three years. [Zhang Wei/China Daily]

"As I learnt more Chinese and met many Chinese teachers, I realized there were many aspects that could be improved in Chinese teaching methodologies," Tournier says.

"So we designed new teaching materials and methods."

Tournier formed his TailorMade Chinese Center with three other co-founders in November 2009. The center has since trained 200 students in Beijing and expects to have up to 1,000 of them in three years.

It also aims to have an office in Shanghai as part of plans to offer its "tailor-made Chinese" in major cities nationwide.

Tournier targets mainly French, German and American students aged from 25 to 40.

"They are professionals, businesspeople or staff in the embassies. We will target mainly people from central business areas in Beijing. If you walk through capital's central business district at lunchtime, it hardly looks like China at all. Many of the people bustling around in suits or congregating in cafes are Westerners. They are our targets."

The Frenchman is just one of many foreigners worldwide who are banking on the Chinese language to ride the country's development and rising global influence.

Many of them say Chinese might even become the new lingua franca.

Wang Jianqin, deputy head of the center for studying Chinese as a second language under Beijing Language and Culture University.[Wang Jing/China Daily]

"It may happen," says Wang Jianqin, professor and deputy head of the center for studying Chinese as a second language under the Beijing Language and Culture University. The center is the only State-level research institute of its kind.

"Whether a language can become the lingua franca depends on two criteria -economic influence and the country's soft power, or cultural influence," says Wang, 56.

"Think back a thousand years. Who would have predicted the demise of Latin? But there should be little likelihood of Chinese becoming the world's language in the next 50 years.

"Chinese people themselves are still rushing to learn English."

Still, global interest in the Chinese language looks set to grow.

More than 40 million foreigners worldwide are learning Chinese, a senior official with the Confucius Institute headquarters said at the organization's fifth annual conference in Beijing last December. Confucius Institutes are affiliated with the Ministry of Education and help spread Chinese language and culture.

More than 300 of the institutes have been established in 96 countries and regions, said Xu Lin, the headquarter's chief executive.